You need no ticket to make a place for yourself here where humor, black and otherwise, comes to you from the stage where the human comedy itself is being played, its performance trumping the things dark and tragic and found in the world of literature.

Saturday, June 26, 2004

From St. M --

"Look, I appreciate you using a fascinating character like yours truly, but I must be honest and say you're no James Joyce. Yes, he invoked me for Ulysses, but that was different, as I'm sure you can see. In short, history will never forget Ulysses, while the story you have put me into will be lucky if it's day after tomorrow's fish wrap. I'm just bein' honest."

The picture was taken with only seconds before liftoff of the Atlantis. It was carrying a section of the International Space Station, delivering a piece of a manmade puzzle to the uncaring heavens.
The film had been left in the camera over a year's time and the picture's yellow tinge, like a photographic cataract, blurred the event and threw the moment out of focus and beyond facile comprehension. That sepia tone image let the uninformed place it in the first days of the space race. The central subject proved this chronology a lie.
We’d earlier visited the Kennedy Space Center -- a hybrid of sideshow and actual rocket science in awesome fruition, equal parts hokiness, Barnumesque PR and red, white and blue puffery.
From these grounds ordinary (yet instantly glamorous) men and women, "loose the chains of gravity, to rise to renown beyond the stratosphere”, said our guide. Those who swell with pride at such things routinely and unashamedly burst here.
There came a low murmur of excitement as our bus passed behind the VIP bleachers. All that was visible of the Atlantis from this groundling viewpoint, peeking over the gantry, was the tip of its bright orange fuel tank -- a massive mutation of Florida’s favorite fruit, full of the juice that would vault the crew to fame. Even the most cynical momentarily lost their breath at the thought.
#

Back home a look to the right off our third floor balcony above the long flat beach gave a prime view. A nearly full moon hung above the sea in the dusk, as the shuttle launched at 6:15 and sped away like a sky surfer, leaving a celestial wave to slowly break in morphing and dissipating sunset hues.
At 7:00 an Egret flew up to our vantage point. It returned our gazes in equanimity, though it had arrived through a transport of fear.
With fire and scientific thunder a smoky trail had been left in the bird's sky, a giant question mark it would never understand.

I'm very involved with other things right now -- one of them is the ULA. Let me make a suggestion for your further reading: Go to http://www.literaryrevolution.com to get a look at what the future of American literature will descend from. Navigate through the site. I think you'll find the revolution a revelation.

As critics and others tear apart every bit of writing that they can get their hands on, it would seem to me to be a good preemptive strike on my part to spill out some of my subconscious here, before the interpreters try to interpret, the deconstructionists start to deconstruct and the critics start to critique.

If you think that I am overestimating the importance of this blog, or my writing in general, I have one word for you: tough.

The dream --

Comedian Martin Short leads me into a sort of overpass underground (Escher-like in design that’s the only way I can describe it) tunnel. He disappears around a corner after pointing out a woman who is so grey she blends into the concrete.

I peer around the corner and find that it is a filthy pool filled with rats and worse, and fear something dire has happened to Short.

I then look back to see him enter from where we originally came in. He is wearing a bowler, a double-breasted suit and carrying an umbrella. He goes over and seems to say something to the grey woman.

Two more dressed the same way enter, one running over to me. It is a woman and she asks me a question, which I don't answer. She presses and still I am silent. (This is like something out of an old TV show called The Prisoner.)

I am taken away; it seems to high school, where there is some intrigue involved in my presence there, although I have no idea what it is about. But Toby Maguire (Wonderboys, Spiderman) seems ready to help me avoid trouble, when he motions me to take a drink from the water fountain to hide my face just as someone who could identify me is coming.

I then see the recurring (from other dreams) two women, who always pose some sort of a threat to me. Also two smaller women (about 3ft.) joined at their large hips. All four try to get through the large hallway doors typical to a high school and get stuck. This is not good as I'm trying to get away -- or just leave school as fast as I can.

I am then in a very modern looking house or apartment, having no idea how I got there. At this point, although I have gone through some strange stuff I am still aware of myself and of being in situations I don’t accept.

I know that I shouldn't be there and feel like a thief when a little girl comes up to me and tells me to follow her. I do and she takes me to her parents’ bedroom. Her mother is nude, lying on her back. Her father is on his stomach, covered by a blanket. There are two corded control boxes hanging from the ceiling and as the woman stirs she reaches up and pushes a few numbers. The control makes her go back to sleep. Form this and the clean metallic minimalist look of the place I realize that I am in the future.

The little girl then tells me her doggy has to go out. I find it back in the living room. It is a very large shaggy dog, though it looks like an overgrown newborn puppy. I start to rub its belly and it talks to me.

I then unwittingly trip something that causes a music system to come on. I turn it off quickly, but it was also piped into the bedroom and the husband comes out, is less surprised by my presence than I thought he would be and says he is calling the police.

Chronology (such as it is) in the dream gets messed up, as does my self-awareness as I forget who I am. I am still in the same house though and I'm sitting around with the family, who has somehow accepted me. A movie has just finished and we start to discuss it. One of the kids says, "That movie really organized me", and I realize I am so far in the future that there are phrases I don't even understand.

I ask the mother, who has turned from a voluptuous blonde into a Donna Reed or June Cleaver type, what year it is. She says, "Oh, it's '41."

I ask "2041 or 3041?" and the kids -- there are three, androgynous and all under fifteen -- stifle giggles.

I am then walking out of a theatre where I have seen yet another movie and try in vain to remember it's name. Toby Maguire runs past me and gives me a meaningful look. I decide that the name of the movie is "Coincidental Oblivion" and continue walking.

I then wind up in a hotel where there is a reunion of my high school class going on. I am invisible, even to the extent that when – in my bathrobe – I walk around the lounge areas where it is taking place, no one notices me. This bothers me as I thought that I could show them what a success I have become to be able to be among them, Heffner-like, without any repercussions from the hotel management. Hell, I might even own the damn place for all they (or I, in fact) know. But no, I’m just invisible.

I am next in Harvard Yard, struggling with my suitcase, which is overstuffed for some reason. I see an odd looking structure and go over to it to find it is an inactive guillotine that instead of a blade, now has a weight that appears to be about 100 pounds. It is high up at the top of the device and there is a chain at about the level of my head so I put the suitcase down on the ground and pull the chain. The weight comes down and flattens my suitcase, making it more manageable. Those in the general vicinity are surprised to see that the guillotine has moved after being unused for many years. I high tail it out of there, forgetting my toiletry case and wind up…

In Greenwich Village, where, as I am walking along the street, somewhere around Cooper Union, I am accosted, pleasantly, by a young woman who asks if I speak French. She says her name is:

“Joisie.”

I say, “Un peu, mais Bonjour!”

She says, “That's alright, I speak English fairly well.”

Then she says, "You must have stayed in a nice hotel" and I ask:

“How did you know that?”

She points down to my suitcase, which has a towel on the outside that pictures a sort of Moulin Rouge dancer, complete with colorful attached pasties, which stick out. "I didn't know that was there!" I say and she looks at me oddly.

"But what do you do?" I ask this woman who now as we walk has her arm around my waist.

"I suppose you know," she says and then disappears as I walk into a less friendly part of the Village and wake up.